Winter Lessons
by Dragon Empress
Summary: It's hard to start again when you know the dead are always watching you...' After Kyoto, Soujiro is finding is harder to move on than some would think...


ME: Wow, it's been a while since I wrote anything Kenshin. Still, after reading the final part of the Kyoto saga, I felt compelled to write something. And, since one Seta Soujiro is a character I find fascinating, who better to write about?

DISCLAIMER: NOPE, DON'T OWN IT. THOUGH, THAT WOULD BE PRETTY SWEET…

ME: Okay, well…enjoy!

---

It's cold. The sky is hanging low, a vibrant, violent colour that alludes to the oncoming storm. Great, wine-stained clouds are looming, menacing, above his head, bringing winter to autumn. The seasons are changing.

He feels it every year, along with the pricking of tears behind his eyes. Like rain to a drought-ravaged land, almost. Except that these tears fall like hot pokers upon his face. They burn and they _hurt_.

They leave marks invisible to all but him.

_Last time, he smashed the mirror in his room at the inn…ripped it clean off the wall, and smashed it into a thousand pieces. Just so he couldn't see those marks anymore._

_Just so he couldn't see Shishio laughing over his shoulder anymore…_

He feels anger these days, clear and sharp, like a cut from a sword. Like a mortal wound it never really goes away, it just festers, and gets deeper as the weather gets colder. An immeasurable scar; so strange in how it grows and recedes like the tide.

He is a child conceived in darkness, and the winter makes him hurt so much more.

It must be all those dark, early nights…

_Last time, he scratched himself all over with half-bitten nails until he bled…leaving tiny, dark splotches all over the cheap, wooden floor. No big loss._

_But the pain was good. It was what he needed. _

_It was what kept him awake, and fought back the dreams that brought forth pain of an entirely different kind…_

Yes, it is probably the dreams that he fears the most.

Filled with the faceless dead, screaming, grasping at him. Sometimes they're all headless, or soaked entirely in their own blood.

Sometimes they're all wrapped in bandages, from head to toe.

And it's then he wakes up screaming.

_Last time, his heart pounded so hard he thought it might stop…as he sat clutching the thin, sweat-drenched blankets to his chest. His breath came in heavy, gunshot-quick gasps._

_And, looking down, he saw that all the scratch marks on his arms and chest had been torn open once again…_

He is a child conceived in darkness, and yet, only now has it gotten hard to see.

Sometimes, briefly, he wonders how Himura managed to survive all of this without losing his mind entirely. All the darkness, all this pain. All those shadows that live in nightmares. Truly, going cold turkey is the hardest thing to do, since it's the living without that makes you toss and turn.

Of course, it's not the killing he misses. Not at all. In fact, it's almost worse, in that what he misses is the Devil himself…

The Devil and his minions, all of them probably laughing at him now from the deepest, darkest reaches of Hell. As he struggles with this life he's trying to resuscitate.

It's hard to start again when you know the dead are always watching you.

_But last time, after it was all finally over, he went back to behaving like the perfect, civil young man…picking up the smashed mirror pieces like they were nothing at all._

_In the broken shards he saw himself, reflected in the sunlight and unscarred once more. No ghostly devils laughing over his shoulder._

And yet… 

He watches, transfixed, as the clouds finally burst overhead. The rain is freezing cold, just as predicted, and it's soaking him right the way through. Right down to his aching bones.

Winter is here.

And he knows, all too well, that sooner than later there will be darkness once again. It was something that he was taught once, a long time ago now. When he was younger, and lived like a shadow.

_He tried so hard to forget the lessons, but found that he never could…_

For there will always be the night. And the darkness…falling upon darkness, as long as there is light.

---

ME: Well, it was odd, I'll admit you that. Though, I do rather like it.

So, please be nice and review?


End file.
